Knowing who you are: this is so much what non-duality is about, and it’s really interesting to relate this to native or indigenous teachings.
Let’s say back in the day, before people’s brains got divided, before our Western Civilization brains got divided, people lived in harmony with the world around them, the universe around them. We know this because we have pockets of native and Indigenous people who have reached the point where they’re able to come start talking to us about this in a real way.
What’s really interesting is that we have Native Americans in North America (these are the people that I’m running across and listening to on Youtube, reading their books), and the Aboriginal people in Australia who have been completely separated in the world thousands and thousands of years.
People have been on Australia, that land, for 80,000 years, and people have been in the Americas, they’re thinking maybe even 30,000 years, a long, long time of living in harmony. And when you listen to the stories from these completely diverse places, across the planet from each other, the stories are so similar about who we are.
When a person is born into these native traditions they give you, from the minute you’re born, who you are. And this “who you are” is related to the whole world, your tribe. This “who you are” is related to where you come from.
We don’t have that in our Western society. If we try to pretend that we do then we make it even worse. This is what nationalism is about. People so much want to know who they are that they decide, “I’m an American. We’re the best country in the world.” All that kind of stuff.
But that’s not who you are; that is a concept put on top of you.
This is why non-duality is so good, and why non-duality intersects with these native teachings so well. The only option we have as people that have been divided in our minds for centuries and generations is to go to a point of absolute zero to know who we are.
The good news is that the point of absolute zero is a fabulous place to be; this is a really great place to start. That’s why so many non-dual teachings talk about zero and talk about nothingness. Non-duality itself means “not two,” so the only thing that our brains can conceive of that’s “not two” is this zero point.
All the concepts of your mind don’t work—don’t try to sort it out. “This one’s good, and that one’s bad.” No. Just find that place where none of those have hold.
When you see this nothing, when you see this zero the mind unhooks. All it takes is just one time to see absolute nothing. Then the only thing that exists is who is seeing this nothing, and that’s you. And then from that point, now all of reality can come into balance in your life without you controlling it.